The Rise of Gauran
by Jaynesdingleberries
Summary: The Legend of Gauran Dolthoglin, Part One. What would happen if Lothíriel had a Fourth Brother, one who is cursed at birth, and the effect he will have on her life, and her relationship with Éomer, King of Rohan.
1. Prologue: Periorch

**Disclaimer: I do not own, in any way other than wishing that I did, the characters of my Lord and Savior JRR TOKIEN. He is a Eru, and I, a lowly Maiar, cannot ever claim that I am responsible for his great works.**

**Jaynesdingleberries Presents: Prologue of the Legend of Gauran Dolthoglin**

**Please, enjoy.**

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The woman locked cold fingers over her mouth to prevent herself from screaming. She was very near deaf with her need to scream out in terror, her heart thundering like a great drum in her ears. Élíriel cowered, her delicate body concealed in the deep roots of a guardian oak; the smell of old rotting wood permeated her. But her fingers, used to the careful strumming of her lap-harp and the beautiful embroidery that her mother had taught her, bit deeply into her cheeks and she prayed that the orcs would not hear her.

The smell of damp earth filled her nostrils and she could feel it seep like cold fingers through her torn blue dress and began wracking her body with chills. The cold, however, was not as chilling as the vivid images in her mind. She could see her brother, brave tall Thindfast, the last son of good Lord Orchdring, fall beneath the blackened scimitars of the orc ambushers. She remembered the shock in his face at seeing these enemies here, on the borders of Dol Amroth.

Here she was supposed to have been safe, in the lands of her husband-to-be, Imrahil. Her escort had been relieved when they had reached these shores safe from a long an harrowing journey from Tolfolas, but too soon. A league from the place where Prince Imrahil was to meet them, they had come: uruks, filthy and vile in their scarred and blackened armor, from the underbrush and the green forest had come alive with the screams of her men and the battle-shrieks of the enemy.

As their horses shied and reared in fright gray-haired Thindfast had struck her little dappled palfrey across her haunches with the flat of his glinting sword and sent the filly fleeing into the forest. The orcs had tried to grab her and bring her down, ripped her lily-embroidered cloak with their rotting talons, but they did not unseat her. At the edge of the copse, before disappearing entirely she had managed to turn half-way in her saddle and saw Thindfast, his sword stained with the foul blood of the _glam _and bright were his green eyes as they met her own eyes, of the same green as the grassy knolls of their island home, and in his throat the black arrows thrust, his chest cleaved by the force of a descending scimitar, spilling blood redder than rubies. She saw him fall, the last Lord of Tolfolas.

She had fled, then, her heart shattered and her will nigh to being broken. And behind her the yells of her pursuers hounded her, driving both her and her horse, brave little Malubrithil, further into the darkening forest.

The snap of a bow brought the filly down, her heart pierced and broken, her barrel chest heaving as she screamed in agony and panic; Élíriel had been blessed that she had been thrown clear, but her body felt broken and she could not move far, for her right foot could not support her weight.

So she had crawled, quick and quiet, to the oak tree where she had found a hold at the base, barely large enough to allow her small frame but she managed to slip in, scraping her shoulders as she went.

And she waited, huddled down, with her fingers digging deep gouges in her cheeks, striving to keep her fear from consuming her. She was a Lady of Tolfolas, and she strove to keep the courage of her islander people strong in her fluttering heart.

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Dugûk found the horse first, his arrow in her heart, her eyes glazed over in death. He smelled the she-man, her scent was unmistakable. He tasted her fear and he reveled in it, his heart filled with hunger and hate. He was the first to find her, and he planned to be the one to claim the prize.

Her path was obvious though the brush, the earth disturbed and the foliage broken. She had crawled on her belly and it thrilled him. He crouched low to the ground and sniffed, his teeth bared and dripping with dark saliva.

Dugûk followed her path and howled in glee. With his scimitar he smashed the edges of the hole between the oak's roots and the rotting wood gave way easily. The she-man's screams echoed through the cold twilight.

He got his arm in the hole and grabbed her, grimacing as she fought and bit at him. That only made him laugh and he yanked harder from her hiding place. He could feel her arm break under his clawed hand, her scream muffled in the tree-hole.

"Come out little rabbit, Dugûk's hungry!" he snarled and with a grinding pop she slid free from the roots, her arms at an awkward angle, her exposed skin abraded from rough handling. She was dirty now, dirty like all men-folk were, her long black hair tangled and knotted from her flight, her body shaking and convulsing as she tried to fight him; but she was a delicate woman, unused to hardships, and fear had taken most of her strength.

He threw her to the ground and landed on her, drinking up her screams like it was a liquor, and bit her savagely on her left cheek, taking flesh and blood into his body. Savagely he ripped her dress and with blood-stained claws he reached between her legs and raked her.

Élíriel was crying like a wounded animal, her hands struggling to stop the orc, her nails breaking on his rough flesh, but she did not stop. The pain of his teeth at her face was nothing in comparison to the agony of his claws at her core. But she fought back with every inch of her being; with her teeth she bit him, tearing his ear almost all the way off; with her delicate fingers she reaches to pluck out his red eyes, with her small feet and knees she battled his lower body.

But Dugûk was very large for an uruk, and he had been born and reared in the violence of Minas Morgul, where nothing could survive unless they were more quick and brutal than their opponent. He held her.

And then, filled to the brim with her fear and her pain, gorged on her flowing blood, he reached between his own legs.

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A single squire of Thrindfast survived the attack, though only by chance. His small pony, Sarn, a gift from his cobbler father, had bolted north and west. Gladtál had not meant to flee; he was as brave as any man of Tolfolas, and would have died to save his liege.

But he was from a fisher-village, and was unused to horses. It was why he had been given a pony to ride; not only could his father not afford a horse, but it was dubious if Gladtál could even control one. With barely three days practice at controlling the pony, Gladtál had lost control of the reigns, and had not the knowledge of how to command the beast.

Sarn the pony had followed his instincts; and for some unknown reason the dark haired boy and his dirt brown pony passed unscathed through the ambush, and then north.

It was by chance that the boy was found by Imrahil's warrior.

It was almost a miracle that Gladtál was able to lead the knights of Dol Amroth back to the ambush sight; and there the knights slew freely the filth of the orcs. And there the proud young Prince of Dol Amroth found and slew the foul orc that was about to slay his betrothed.

Even so, with every miracle and blessing taken into account, the rescuers of the Lady Élíriel Aforloch, the last child of Lord Orchdring of Torfolas, had come too late.

Bloodied and ravaged, the lady with the brilliant green eyes bore a horror too great, a seed of hate planted deep within her abused body to grow into new life.

A child would be born.

_Periorch._

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_Glam _orc-troop

Torfolas large island in the Bay of Belfalas at the mouth of the Anduin.

_Periorch _Half-Orc


	2. One: Birth Masks

**Disclaimer: Not Mine!!!! How many times do I gotta gorram say it?**

**Oops, wrong show…. :)**

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It was many months before Élíriel could bring herself to look at a man, let alone at Imrahil. It was not logical, perhaps; but her heart was sore like her body, and it was right for the blame to fall on him. He had not been there, had come too late; Thrindfast and most of his best men were dead, along with Glosiel, her young maid, who had been riding near the rear of the column.

All of them she had grown up with and were friends with. All of them she mourned for, tearfully, silently. For she had not spoken a word since that hour when, resisting with every fiber of her being, she had been violated by foulness.

Slowly the pain of her wounds diminished, but not the pain that resounded within her mind. Over and over she replayed the event, felt the hate and anger of the orc Dugûk above her, grunting and biting at her neck and shoulders. Too many nights had she woken screaming wordlessly in horror, only to be comforted by Imrahil's mother, the Princess Huornie, who had taken it upon herself to tend the now deeply scarred Élíriel.

But slowly scars fade, or so the kind woman said as she stroked Élíriel's sweaty brow. And when the girl became violently sick in the mornings that followed her body's healing, and Huornie held back her lush black hair, the woman would only frown slightly, and be gentle with her hands as she comforted the girl.

The first man Élíriel spoke to was not a man, indeed, but the boy, Gladtál, to whom she owed her life. It fell to the girl to comfort his own disturbed mind, for indeed he felt the turbulent emotion of shame and failure for not saving Thrindfast, for being too slow to save her.

So in comforting him, she began to see for herself. And her lonely vigil she had kept in Hournie's bower ended, and slowly, so very slowly, she began to forgive Imrahil, and forget Dugûk.

Imrahil was calm with her, patient. With a vengeance his patrols eradicated all threat of orcs, and with soft voice and slow steps, he won back the heart of the girl he had wooed in his travels to Tolfolas. And when her hands rested on a belly now round with an orc-bred child, he could only see her eyes, hidden as they were behind a veil of black hair. She wore it down to hide the scars on her face, but he never saw them, even when it was up, he just saw her eyes, her brilliant green eyes.

No one knew at first, though Hournie had suspected. But as the months passed it became obvious, and again Élíriel haunted the Princess' bower. The lady of Dol Amroth offered gentle words to comfort her, but they barely reached the girl's ears. All she could feel was the life within her, and although memories of how this life began hovered in her mind constantly, she often felt a ghost of a smile hover about her lips.

Imrahil visited her often in the months that followed, his love pure and fiercely bright. She offered once, in humble difference, to return to Tolfolas, to have their engagement annulled. Élíriel understood the impact of what was happening to her, of what the birth of her child would mean. It would be a half-breed and a bastard. There were few men who would tolerate such a thing in a bride.

Imrahil had fervently argued that she stay.

And so she stayed.

And when he had asked her to marry him the next month she had agreed, with a smile in her heart.

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Pain ripped through her as the midwife, Ioreth, urged her to push harder. Huornie's hands rested firmly on her slim shoulders as her body heaved off the sweat soaked bed.

"Almost there, dear one. One…more…push!!!!! Push!" the midwife's voice rose in encouragement as her capable hands grasped the head and shoulders of the babe and guided it out of it's mother's body with an audible _plop._

Her gray eyes wide, Ioreth tied off the cord with two bits of twine and cut between them with a sharp little dagger. She tried not to look at the thing in her hands, being one of the few that knew of it's true parentage; despite her being Imrahil's wife, Ioreth knew that this child was not his, she was one of the healers who had attended Élíriel's wounds after the _glam _had attacked them in the woods.

But the infant's cries drew her gaze and she gasped.

"What?" Élíriel asked, her voice spent with effort, and cracking. She looked up at Ioreth, "What? Please Ioreth! What's wrong?"

The midwife looked up and met Élíriel's brilliant green eyes. "It's a boy, my lady."

Imrahil burst in then, not to be left in the dark when his lady was in need. His face echoed his worry as he strode to her side and grasped her hand, not noticing the others in the room. "Are you alright, dearest?"

But Élíriel would not be swayed from her course; her other hand reaching out to Ioreth she called, "Give me my son!"

"Do you think that is wise, dearest?" Imrahil asked, his eyes gentle, his voice kind and soft. His hand was warm and large, sword calluses rough against the smooth skin of her palm.

She met his eyes and he saw the need there. He looked up at Ioreth, who had aided in his own birth, and nodded. "Bring him, then."

Ioreth approached slowly, the child swathed snugly in her arms, and set the bundle upon the girl's belly. The instant it touched her Élíriel could feel a quieting deep inside her body as her womb contracted instinctively. She wrapped her free hand around the little bundle and looked down at the boy.

He was crying insistently, but they weren't the shrill shrieks of orcish-kind, but the raw lusty bellows of manfolk, and as she gazed down at him he looked back up at her, his eyes bright and blue as every newborn's eyes were, and when their gaze's met he quieted and waved a tiny hand above his head.

His features were small and squashed and wrinkled, but save for the color he was perfectly formed with a full head of black hair. This was the human in him, this fineness of feature; the orc in him was the color of his skin: a strangely compelling mix of gray and green and black, all dappled and flushed with the ordeal of birth. The design of the marks on his face made it look slightly wolfish.

"He's beautiful, " Élíriel breathed, not noticing the shared glanced of the others, only seeing her son. This child was not the cause of her night terrors; there was no evil in him, only the promise of new beginnings. "My Gauran."

Imrahil looked askance at the child. It was Élíriel's son, and for that reason only he did not loathe it on sight. It was against nature for this one to exist, conceived in pain and blood and unremitting hate. But the pure love shining from his wife's face softened his heart. "Gauran, a good name. But Élíriel, dearest, we cannot keep him."

Her eyes met his, shocked and angry, "Why?"

He sighed, and glanced up to his mother, she nodded and beckoned Ioreth to her and they left the room. Imrahil found his beloved's gaze again. "He is _periorch, _dearest. The people will not forget the terrors the orcs have visited upon them, and they would be cruel. I know you love him, as you should, but think what would be best for him."

"How could I part with him?" she whispered, tears beginning to fall over black lashes. Imrahil could feel his chest constrict at her tears.

"What life could we offer him, when one look at his face could condemn him to hate and fear?" he whispered in reply.

Élíriel heard his words and understood. She could not do that to her son. She bent her head down and kissed his black hair and her eyes closed on a new wave of tears. Her heart began to ache again, like it had not ached for months. Then she stilled, and looked up at Imrahil. A different light began to shine in her eyes.

"Dearest do you not know the Tolfolan custom? When a child is born with a caul upon their face, they were a mask for the rest of their lives, in deference to Eru's will."

For an instance Imrahil did not comprehend what his wife spoke of, then his eyes cleared in understanding. He was dubious, but there was a part of him that soared at the hope in her eyes. "And Gauran, son of Élíriel, being masked from the day of his birth, shall live among the people's of Dol Amroth without fear?"

"So be it."

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Gauran werewolf

_Glam _orc-host

_Periorch _half orc


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